2011- Year In Review: Trends From Google, Facebook, Airtel

With 2011 coming to a close in a week or so, here’s a roundup of what major digital ventures are announcing as trends they’ve observed, on the basis of data. We’ll update this post as and when more trends are announced, so if you have such data, do share it with us.

Google recently released its annual analysis of the most searched terms, top celebrities, top movies and top news of the year called Google Zeitgeist 2011.

Top Searches: Facebook was the most searched term on Google followed by Google’s own video sharing site YouTube and mail service Gmail. Yahoo’s mail service ‘Yahoomail‘ which recently added support for 8 Indian languages ranked fourth while Rediff’s mail service ‘Rediffmail‘ ranked eighth. Search engines Google & Yahoo took up the fifth and sixth place while Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) and Indian Railways took up the seventh and ninth in the list. Online free SMS messaging website Way2sms completed the list by taking the final position.

Fastest Rising Searches: Facebook was also the fastest rising search term with Google’s own social networking site Google+ following up in the third position. Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS), which conducts the recruitment for bank probationary officers and clerical cadre of the participating public sector banks, surprisingly took up the second place in the list, indicating interest for online applications in Government employment. Other prominent search terms include Cricketing tournments World Cup 2011 (fourth position) and IPL 2011 (eight position); Bollywood movies like Bodyguard (fifth position), Ra.One (sixth position) and Ready (tenth position); Anna Hazare (seventh place) and Poonam Pandey (ninth place).

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Top Celebrities: If we look at the list of the top searched celebrities on Google, one thing that will stand out is that Bollywood rules the country. Katrina Kaif was top searched celebrity with others like Salman Khan, Poonam Pandey, Aishwarya Rai, Kareena Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra making it to the list. Justin Bieber was the sole Hollywood celebrity in the list. Other prominent people in the list include Anna Hazare, Sachin Tendulkar and Steve Jobs.

Fastest Rising Celebrity: Anna Hazare was the fastest rising celebrity which was probably driven by his Satyagraha movement for passing the Jan Lokpal bill in the Indian Parliament. The movement soon gained momentum with a series of demonstrations and protests across the country. He was followed by Poonam Pandey, whose risque antics made headlines and Apple CEO Steve Jobs, whose death was mourned worldwide. Other celebrities in the list Anushka Sharma, Salman Khan, Justin Bieber, Kajal Agarwal, Katrina Kaif, Vijay Mallya and Aishwarya Rai.

Top Searched Movies: Bodyguard was the most searched movie in the country followed by Ra.One which became more known for its marketinginitiatives rather than the movie itself. Red Chillies Entertainment, the motion company behind Ra.One had reportedly associated with 30 different brands and conducted a 10-month long movie promotion campaign with a marketing budget of Rs 40 crore. Other movies in the list include Harry Potter, Delhi Belly, Singham, Ready, Mankatha, Transformers 3, Dookudu and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.

Trending News: Cricket seems to have got the highest news coverage this year with IPL and World Cup taking the top two positions. While IPL was live streamed online simultaneously on Indiatimes.com and Indiatimes channel on YouTube, the mobile live streaming was handled by Apalya. Formula 1 (F1) which made its Indian debut at New Delhi in October this year, also made it entry into the list at tenth place. Other newsworthy events in the Zeitgeist list were the emergence of Lokpal Bill and Aadhar card (which recently received a major setback with a parliamentary standing committee recommending the withdrawal of UID Bill); Japan Earthquake, the death of Osama Bin Laden and Diwali festival.

Music Downloads: Airtel claimed to have recorded over 150 million mobile music downloads with songs like Chammak Challo from Ra.One and I like it rough from Lady Gaga emerging as the most downloaded songs of the year in the Bollywood and Hollywood segment respectively. The survey also said that Tamil-English hit song Kolaveri Di recorded 2,10,000 music downloads in 18 days of its launch and the company’s own live music concert service ‘Music Mehfil’, clocked over 1,20,000 users in a span of 12 days.

Wallpaper Downloads: Airtel claims to have recorded around 20 million wallpaper downloads in the last year with Katrina Kaif and Shahrukh Khan taking the top honors in Bollywood segment; Michael Jackson holding the top position in the Hollywood segment and Sachin Tendulkar emerging as the top celebrity amongst sports stars.

Mobile Sites: According to the survey, Google seems to be the most popular mobile site on Airtel network followed by Gmail and Facebook, however it must be noted that the Google numbers are a combination of traffic to google.com and google.co.in. Airtel also claims that 21 percent of Facebook users, 6 percent of Orkut users and 4 percent of Twitter users in India access the sites through their network.

Apps: Airtel said that the apps pertaining to Cricket, Bollywood and SpyCam segment were among the top 10 most downloaded apps from Airtel’s app central and the top downloaded apps were – ‘iSpyCams‘, an app which allows users to view popular webcams from all around the globe; Kingfisher Calendar 2011; NetQin’s Secure SMS; Entertainment portal FridayMoviez and the instant messaging app IM plus.

If you look into Yahoo’s analysis of the top searched terms in various areas like celeb, automobile, travel, sports, event, controversy and news, Anna Hazare has emerged as the most searched person of the year and Sachin Tendulkar as the most searched sportsman of the year. Katrina Kaif was the top searched celeb of the year and Murder 2 was the top searched movie of the year.

Yahoo also said that the top three search words were Anna Hazare, anti-corruption and the Lokpal Bill. The top gadget-related search query was surprisingly Samsung’s Galaxy Tab while the top automobile-based search term was Maruti Swift. The top event-related search term was the Cricket Word Cup 2011 which happened between 19 February – April 2 in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, indicating that Cricket still rules among other sporting events in India. Lifestyle-wise, Yoga was the top search term of the year and Goa was the top destination term of the year.

Facebook: Social networking giant Facebook recently gave a glimpse into 2011’s most shared topics both globally and specific countries like United States, India, United Kingdom, Australia, and Brazil in its Memology 2011 application. Anna Hazare and the Jan Lokpal Bill was the most popular status update across the country, which may be because of the platform’s usage in creating awareness for the anti-corruption movement, managing its community members and keeping them updated of future developments.

This was followed by Ra.One song & Chammak Challo song; the deaths of Osama Bin Laden, Jagjit Singh and Steve Jobs; statuses about cricketers Yuvraj Singh and Mahendra Singh Dhoni; Bollywood movie Rockstar; The Indian National Congress and the Sikkim and Gujarat earthquakes.

Twitter: While Twitter didn’t reveal any country specific topics or trends, one of the biggest stories this year was of Shohaib Athar, who live-tweeted the American military raid on the Osama bin Laden compound, by accident.

2011 has been the year when Indian markets have embraced social media to its fullest. Trends are relevant on twitter, Facebook has a office in Hyderabad and Indians are the second biggest nationality on Google+ Let’s hope 2012 is about the audience maturing and start exploring professional networking avenues such as LinkedIn, Apna Circle, Branch Out etc. Hoping for a more vibrant netizen in 2012!
Cheers